January 4, 2013

Classically trained singers like Betty Noyes, Betty Wand, and Marni Nixon made careers out of singing for some of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, including Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron. One of the greatest movie musicals, West Side Story, dubbed three of its leads—Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, and Rita Moreno—because their voices weren’t trained for the operatic score. The film was better for it. (Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris, whose singing was not dubbed, had less challenging vocal parts.) Similarly, the men behind Singin’ in the Rain, a movie partly about dubbing in the movies, had no problem dubbing Debbie Reynolds for a couple of songs. The King and I, Gigi, and My Fair Lady are other prominent musicals that used dubbing without shame.

Everything in those old movies was more "false," but within n comprehensive environment of falseness, it made sense. It's false that people are singing at all. There's falseness to any stage show. But in a stage show, the actors are really singing, not lip-synching. I'd rather not watch lip-synching, whether it's the actor's own voice or not.

Anyway, the new move "Les Miserables" has the actors singing, not lip-synching to their own or somebody else's vocals. Some people are annoyed by the low-quality singing, and I don't know how bad it is. I think my taste is for real actors singing, but I doubt if I'll see this movie. (I have seen the stage show.) My problem isn't the way actors sing. It's the way actors act. I don't know exactly why, but over the years, I grew less and less interested in seeing human beings pretend to be characters, and at some point, I started to find it actively annoying. I especially dislike long, tight closeups — as if every mediocre actor should be treated like Falconetti in "The Passion of Joan of Arc."

Actually, I can pinpoint the beginning of my awareness of this annoyance: a particular film that came out in 1997. Once you let yourself see that maybe you don't like something that you've assumed you love — people love movies — then all sorts of distracting perceptions disrupt your pleasure. The end stage is: You anticipate these disruptions and become so averse to them that you resist the experience altogether. The question becomes: Why should you spend time at the movies? Time is precious. The default position is: No.

73 comments:

I don't understand how actors acting is annoying to you. You are aware that characters in fiction aren't real, right? That it's the author just making things up? That Fitzgerald's wonderful Gatsby is just make-believe?

The Quickerthanquickpundit, or Instapundit, got me thinking about movies.

The good thing about movies is that most people are familiar with the form and can therefore converse about it. This can be bad too in ways, but overall it is very good. Much like sports or books.

The bad things?

Ashley Judd, death from candy cancer, death from lardassness and other maladies caused by sitting for long periods, death from so much soda (that's why Bloomy banned it right?), death from the violence caused by the images' affects on others, death from despair caused by the moving pictures on the screen, and, as is most often I surmise, death from boredom.

I'm with you. I'm tired of "movie acting". Stage acting without a net is wonderful. I like the tightrope quality having done some myself. But movie/tv acting? It's basically pretty people who are repeating memorized lines and faking emotions to what someone else wrote...and with as many do-overs as needed.

When people don't like mimes it's not that they don't understand that their faces aren't actually chalk white and their eyes aren't actually outlined in black and that they actually are able to speak and they aren't tormented by invisible obstacles.

The end stage is: You anticipate these disruptions and become so averse to them that you resist the experience altogether. The question becomes: Why should you spend time at the movies? Time is precious. The default position is: No.

I don't know about the issue of over-dubbing. But in the current case of Les Miz, this review from the NY-er helped me understand why I found it so difficult to share the enthusiasm - http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/theres-still-hope-for-people-who-love-les-miserables.html

I especially dislike long, tight closeups — as if every mediocre actor should be treated like Falconetti in "The Passion of Joan of Arc."

I remember Bruce Campbell (modern day B-movie king) writing in his first autobiography about being annoyed by actors blowing the takes on the intermediate- and long distance- shots so that the directors would have to use the closeup- shots. Beyond the attention whoring he just thought it bad craftsmanship.

"pretty people who are repeating memorized lines and faking emotions to what someone else wrote."

They aren't pretty in interesting ways anymore, especially the women.

And the lines aren't interesting enough anymore. And the actors try to infuse interestingness by dragging the lines out with huge pauses and "meaningful" gazing:

I... (pause)... don't understand.... (pause)... why....

I would rather read.

This is more my approach to TV, which I watch little of. We don't go to the movies much, but watch about a movie a week on netflix (or something like Archer, which my wife describes as "offensive" - but less so as you watch more ????? - OK, as previously noted, women's brains are a mystery to me).

The scenario I notice is; people who sit right behind me at a concert and NEVER SHUT UP. I have on one or two occassions asked people to stop talking so much - they really don't get it that you want to hear the music without their neverending commentary (or, equally often, unrelated comentary). As soon as people talk for more than a few seconds, I'm ready to be annoyed.

Lipsynching used to irritate my mother no end back in the 1960s. We would be watching some show with a "singer" performing and she would declare "he's lipsynching" with a note of disgust. I can see why now. I was looking for youtube performances of Dave Dudley singing "Six Days on the Road" and all I could find were dubs. By the chronological end of the videos, the poor fellow looks bored out of his mind at the song.

My problem isn't the way actors sing. It's the way actors act. I don't know exactly why, but over the years, I grew less and less interested in seeing human beings pretend to be characters, and at some point, I started to find it actively annoying. I especially dislike long, tight closeups — as if every mediocre actor should be treated like Falconetti in "The Passion of Joan of Arc."

Actors seem more self conscious now in their performances.

Could not agree more about the closeups. Clumsy. Short sighted. Horrible.

1. I didn't really want to get that familiar with Hugh Jackman's tonsils.2. Broadway doesn't translate we'll to the big screen.3. It's a pity that they have to use big name actors to draw audience, because the big name actors are being misutilized.4. We liked Mansour's (?misremembering the name?) voice, but knew most people wouldn't. Heard others comment that they hated his freckles.5. They defiled Santa!!!6. There were times when the big actors singing made us whisper to each other, make it stop, my ears are bleeding, enough already.7. Heaven is a French Revolutionary barricade to someone who didn't explicitly support that cause? I am sure the murderous, mutilating, cannibalistic, anti-Christian French Revolutionaries would be offended that they were portrayed as earning the heaven they so despised.

Two things annoy me about movies--bad scripts with clumsy, grating dialog and unrealistic looking women. This afflicts TV too; I find it distracting and irritating when all the Women of the Zombie Apocalypse are attractively slender with fresh makeup and glossy clean hair. Oh, and anachronisims, whether of objects or attitudes, get on my nerves as well. And excessive noise like constant shouting, shooting or exploding.

I would rather read too in thew downtime that I have which isn't much. Our TV and movie time has dwindled to a couple hours a week and sometimes not even that. We don't have cable and will occasionally work our way through a good, well-written series after it ends.

Surely you realize that few in Hollywood have less status than writers?

Other than a few movies based on novels, when was the last time you saw a writer's name in a movie ad? If moviegoers cared about plot, character development, etc., wouldn't they seek familiar authors (as readers do)?

I've always enjoyed watching Marilyn Monroe sing Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend because it's obviously not her singing at the beginning of the song, then it switches to her actual voice after all the "No!"s

Plus Jane Russell is in that movie.

Women are hired for looks. This isn't new. (Link). Sometimes actors can sing, but rarely. (Surely she can't in the link) It's a joy to see that.

David Denby's piece in The New Yorker links to one by Anthony Lane in another issue of the publication (oddly, the Lane piece [1/7] is dated after Denby's [1/3], but never mind; that's irrelevant). My favorite sentence from Lane's article is this one: The director is Tom Hooper, fresh from “The King’s Speech,” and you can’t help wondering if this shift into grandeur has confused his sense of scale.

Is my understanding incorrect that Hooper was consciously choosing "authenticity" over "vocal quality" as an artistic device? If that indeed was Hooper's aim, then perhaps his central mistake was setting up a false choice (or perhaps failing to perceive a false dichotomy).

I haven't seen the movie yet, and I wasn't planning to see it. However, someone I care about has asked me to please go see it with her (she's already watched it once), and so I probably will. I hope not to regret it.

It's a pity that they have to use big name actors to draw audience, because the big name actors are being misutilized.

Like pint sized gay looking Tom Cruise to play Jack Reacher? Having read the books and gleaned a mental image of the character from the source....there is no way in hell I will watch this movie.

As to lip syncing to music, I find that horrible. I was, for a time a performer, singing and playing guitar. You can always tell when it is a fake lip sync because the actions don't match. Breathing, vocal chords straining, neck muscles moving, lips and eyes don't have the emotional quality. Lip syncing a song is the equivalent of trying to lip sync or fake out a gymnastic performance. You can't fake Olga Corbet's performance. No way to sync. Singing and performing music is an athletic as well as artistic endeavor.

Singing and performing music is an athletic as well as artistic endeavor.

To expound on that, I can forgive the lack of athleticism or technique if the artistic quality is superior. For instance. Bob Dylan, probably the worst voice in history but the artistic quality of his phrasing and the words that express the thoughts superior. Celine Dion. Probably one of the best voices in a long time, but the mechanical and often passionless production is of putting.

Where it is beautiful is when you have the athleticism, the technical quality at its highest level coupled with the artistic, emotional and evocative skills that draw you in.

I suppose the same can be said for a musical theater or musical film production. The skill of the actor/actress to emote and connect can outweigh the lack of quality of their voice.

I agree, I'd rather hear an adequate singer sing than be synched, no matter how great the voice used.

I also don't like movies much in general. But not because of the pretend quality, I'm fine with adequate acting just as I'm fine with adequate singing, but I can't stand poor writing and bad directorial choices, which is something we get far too much of.

If, more than once or twice, a better line or better sequence comes easily to mnind, then I won't enjoy the movie.

All my life I've had nothing but trouble with reality. There's nothing I enjoy more in a movie than phoniness. The phonier the better. I want to briefly see a world where women who look like Ann Hathaway suffer and endure rather tha watch her strike poses on the red carpet......During the renaissance, the greatest artists were goldsmiths, architects, jewellers. Painting with that new fangled perspective was considered a low art. Perspective was a cheap trick, suitable for amazing the peasants but not really for people of taste. A similar phenomonen seems to be going on now. The special effects in movies are really terrific. Some people reject movies like the Transformers out of hand, but I think such movies show a lot of imagination and inventiveness.....Movies by their very nature are two dimensional and don't have a lot to say about the complexity of the human condition, but if you want to see robots destroy a city, they are the preferred medium of expression.

OMG... What a horrible job they did on that. And why? It's not like the actors were speaking Japanese or something. After I found out that the dub was a US release, and that there was an original version with the original voices out there, I longed for many years to find that version. It was released stateside in about 2001, and it's soooo much better than the dubbed one.

The other thing that really really bugs me is the modern predilection of putting mood music in every single scene. You know, music can be a very effective way of conveying mood. But to have it in every scene???... It's almost as if the director doesn't trust the actors enough to convey emotions so that we the audience can perceive them, and gee, I guess they think we need help with music cues telling us how to feel every frame. Nobody understands subtlety anymore!

In the movie "Heat", during the final 15 minute pursuit, with detective Al Pacino chasing villain Robert DeNiro across an airport tarmac, there is no music except at the very end. It was wonderful!

Try finding the soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcocks "The Birds". Guess what... There isn't one! He didn't have any music in the whole movie! Except This!

http://youtu.be/VlbYXISw3Ug

What a fantastic scene! And that is the most music that is in this movie!!!!

Guess I'm the only one here who liked the movie adaptation of Les Miz.

Couple nitpicks tho: Way, way too many closeups on the musical numbers. It's like the director was intent in saying, "See, no lip-synching here!" Yeah, we know - but when Hugh Jackman is walking around while singing, it's okay to show him walking instead of keeping the camera view centered on his nostrils.

Russell Crowe looked the part, but his voice really didn't live up to the part of Javert. In contrast, the freckles on Marius were bloody distracting, and didn't really make the whole love-at-first-sight quality convincing enough.

Loved Jackman, Hathaway, and (surprisingly so) Seyfried. Absolutely adored Samantha Black (Eponine). As comic relief, Cohen and Carter were... irritating, but that's what their characters called for I guess.

Make sure to hit the restroom before you walk in. Unlike the stage musical, there's no intermission, and it's over 2 1/2 hours long.

Celine Dion. Probably one of the best voices in a long time, but the mechanical and often passionless production is of putting.

It seems like Frampton Comes Alive has always been part of my musical awareness, at least once I started listening to rock & roll. It's just so loose and free and good. Every now and then I wondered why I never heard the studio versions of any of those songs. Then late one night I DID here one of the studio versions of, I believe, Show Me the Way. It was a total piece of crap! All the life had been 'produced' right out of the song - dry, rote, mechanical. No wonder the material didn't do all that well until a live version came out.

...

Someone else mentioned all the noise in modern movies and I have to agree that it is distracting. One of the things I like about older movies is the quiet when things should be quiet. (I watched Ministry of Fear last night, which had long noiseless stretches.)

Someone else mentioned the worst of the noise, which is all the damned music. Just stop it!

...

All of which reminds me of sitting in a small theatre in Gainesville watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Two old women from the NYC area were sitting in front of us, loudly exclaiming, "It's so QWAI-et!" Well, it WOULD have been....

The greatest car chase in movie history (Bullitt) goes on for 10 minutes, with no music and no dialogue.

What about the brutal fist fight in They Live!, which clocks in officially at five and a half minutes. But I swear I clocked a version once with the fight at about 13 minutes long! Rumor has it the fight looked so good because Keith David didn't know how to throw a stage punch, so he kept really hitting Roddy Piper during the filming. Yikes!

Some people reject movies like the Transformers out of hand, but I think such movies show a lot of imagination and inventiveness.

The problem I have is that such movies tend to be showcases for special effects at the expense of doing anything else. Movies like 2012 just look like the cut-away scenes in video games, except lacking any back story to hold them together. I'm also just getting tired of digital effects. There's a growing sameness to them that just annoys me at this point.

Celine Dion. Probably one of the best voices in a long time, but the mechanical and often passionless production is of putting.

It seems like Frampton Comes Alive has always been part of my musical awareness, at least once I started listening to rock & roll. It's just so loose and free and good. Every now and then I wondered why I never heard the studio versions of any of those songs. Then late one night I DID here one of the studio versions of, I believe, Show Me the Way. It was a total piece of crap! All the life had been 'produced' right out of the song - dry, rote, mechanical. No wonder the material didn't do all that well until a live version came out.

...

Someone else mentioned all the noise in modern movies and I have to agree that it is distracting. One of the things I like about older movies is the quiet when things should be quiet. (I watched Ministry of Fear last night, which had long noiseless stretches.)

Someone else mentioned the worst of the noise, which is all the damned music. Just stop it!

...

All of which reminds me of sitting in a small theatre in Gainesville watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Two old women from the NYC area were sitting in front of us, loudly exclaiming, "It's so QWAI-et!" Well, it WOULD have been....

Crunchy Frog,I liked the movie. I was expecting a musical and was surprised that it was an opera.

I have never seen the broadway show of it, but I did recently watch the mini-series with Gerard Depardieu as Valjean and John Malkovich as Javert. I preferred Hugh Jackman as Valjean because he didn't have that annoying French/Belgian/Russian accent. And I thought Russell Crowe's Javert was more conflicted and less malicious than Malkovich's.

You can add me to the folks who liked the movie. Hathaway did okay, but I think Jackman made a good Valjean (though yes, the close-ups were excessive). And I was pleasantly surprised about Seyfried as Cosette. I went in dubious and came out a convert. As for Marius, freckles and all, he did an excellent job of conveying the Marius I know from the book - trying to be a grown-up but not quite sure how.

My biggest problem with the movie - and it got touched on here - was the handling of the romance. Marius and Cosette were not love at first sight. She was an awkward teen in becoming and he was a fool who stamped about much in the Luxembourg garden while trying to reconcile his father's status as a Baron of the Emperor and his uncle's royalism. Cosette watched him for quite some time as he got his bearings and he, one day, discovered that the ugly little girl on the bench was growing into quite a comely young lady, at which point he put on his best finery to go to the park and made even more of an idiot of himself in the hopes she would smile at him. The movie made it seem as though Marius and Cosette were Romeo and Juliet, impetuously racing into each others' arms on a surge of hormones. When Marius apologizes for not knowing Cosette's name, it makes much more sense if you know that he did however know her laugh, her smile and where she was every afternoon as they passed their time apart but together.

One thing that has struck me with every version of this I've run across (starting with the original French recording only version) is that there's an underlying sense that you should already have read the book and know these characters to get the parts that don't quite fit together. A case in point in the movie is the cut to Gavroche crying when Eponine died. You would never know from the movie that she was his sister.

mccullough, maybe so for movies in general, but OTOH Hot Shots Part Deux just keeps getting better and better.

And there's a few serious ones that are good, too, e.g. The Lives of Others. (I sure would like to know whether the writers or director had seen The Return of the King when they wrote and blocked the mail-snooping scene at the end of the film...)

One thing that has struck me with every version of this I've run across (starting with the original French recording only version) is that there's an underlying sense that you should already have read the book and know these characters to get the parts that don't quite fit together. A case in point in the movie is the cut to Gavroche crying when Eponine died. You would never know from the movie that she was his sister.

I don't know that you can blame that on the movie, as it was pretty much a straight-to-screen adaptation of the stage musical. The way it came off was that she was well loved by everyone in the barricade.

But yes, the book contained tons more context that is only slightly alluded to in the film version, like the elephant.

The movie is on that list, and, in fact I saw all of those moves. I thought Boogie Nights, LA Confidential, The Apostle, and Titanic were all very good. I had some problems with Wag the Dog, but the one that really annoyed me with the closeups -- even though it was a pretty good romantic comedy, well done in a lot of ways — was My Best Friend's Wedding.

What about animated films? Without the egos of actors and actresses to film around, one would think directors of animated films would be liberated from overemoting close-ups. Pixar's storytelling is amazing -- the opening sequence of "Up" is a masterpiece of a condensed life history.